Britain’s criminal utopia

If you want to see what a disarmed society looks like, look no further than England.

Thousands of angry, drunk, violent thugs running wild and stealing anything they can carry. Shopkeepers and homeowners crippled with fear, unable to defend their loved ones or their property. Innocent citizens forced to watch helplessly while their life’s dreams — everything they worked so hard to build and acquire — are carried out the door, or smashed to pieces, or burned to the ground.

Men, women and children forced to strip naked in the streets, while packs of criminals laugh and ridicule them before making off with their clothing.

The fact is, when British politicians stripped their citizens of their God-given right to self-defense, they robbed them of their freedom and their dignity.

Sales of baseball bats are up over 5,000% on Amazon.co.uk. This isn’t to mark the beginning of little league season. These are desperate homeowners and shopkeepers purchasing the best — and in reality, only — self-defense tool that the British government will allow them to own…at least for now.

If past is prologue, this flood of baseball bats into London will spark cries from government leaders for mandatory bat registration and a wave of new laws on how, when, and under what circumstances British citizens may carry or swing a bat. After all, this is exactly how British citizens lost their gun rights.

First came mandatory gun licensing. Next came a wave of restrictions on firearms ownership. Then came the outright gun bans.

It has been illegal to own a handgun in Britain for nearly 15 years. As a result, Britain’s violent crime rate has soared. In fact, Britain consistently clocks-in with the highest violent crime rate in all of Europe. Last week’s riots notwithstanding, you are six times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York. These are the inconvenient statistics that the gun-ban crowd likes to sweep under the rug.

As if banning handguns didn’t send a strong enough message to criminals that British citizens are ripe for the picking, the British government went even further in 1999.

Recall the tragic story of Tony Martin, the British farmer who was awakened one night to the sound of breaking glass and found two burglars in his home. Martin had been robbed six times before. This time, he went downstairs, retrieved a shotgun, and fired at the intruders.

For this, Martin received life in prison for killing one of the burglars, ten years for wounding the other thug, and one additional year for possession of an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar served just 18 months of a three-year sentence and was given $5,000 in legal assistance from Britain’s Legal Services Commission so he could sue Martin for violating his civil rights.

The British government goes out of its way to embolden the criminal element in society, and now British politicians look at last week’s riots in utter amazement, confused as to how such a thing could happen. As Britain’s Home Secretary recently said in an interview, “The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.”

All Americans should pay close attention to the riots in the Great Britain, because this is the criminal utopia that gun-ban extremists at the United Nations, and in our own White House, want to impose on us.

Next year, the U.N. will convene leaders from various countries around the world to finish writing an international Arms Trade Treaty that could severely restrict or even outright ban Americans’ right to sell, purchase, carry or own a firearm. Anti-gun extremists have been working on this treaty for well over a decade. Now they’re closer than ever to realizing their dream.

Ironically, the British government is one of the strongest proponents of this latest U.N. scheme to destroy our Second Amendment rights. Evidently, British politicians think America and the rest of the world should enjoy the same the criminal utopia that was on full display in London last week.

The U.N. and its anti-gun allies incessantly campaign for the United States to be more like the rest of the world — especially disarmed Great Britain. As we watched the horror unfold in the UK, it has never been clearer: The rest of the world should be more like America when it comes to freedom.

Chris W. Cox is executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.